The Age has picked up on the news of the planned sale of Atari Melbourne House by Atari. They cover the financial problems the parent publisher are experiencing which has led AMH towards this predicament, along with some details and history on Atari Melbourne House...
Melbourne is the centre of the Australian video games industry and Melbourne House is one of the biggest developers. It has about 100 staff.
The company, originally called Beam Software, has produced more than 160 games since 1980…
Dissecta have a summary up of the "The Year of Next Gen: Dissecta Report" event which was held last week in Melbourne. It included a presentation with Chris Mosely, CEO of studio RedTribe and Martin Wilkes, Game Manager at distirbutor Stomp Entertainment, who share their views on how next generation affects their respective businesses and what they are doing about it...
Chris: "I was told it was crazy to contemplate starting a games studio this late in the development cycle, but then again I…
The Courier-Mail has an article on Krome Studios, and includes Steve Stamatiadis talking about Ty, The Tasmanian Tiger, next generation consoles, and the Queensland games industry...
"There is a lot of amazing talent here, which is really fantastic," Stamatiadis says.
"I think the Queensland developers are making an awesome showing for this state overseas...
You just have to look at the calibre of titles that are coming out from the local teams and it is pretty obvious that we have the lion's…
Eurogamer has an interview with Irrational Games' Level Designer, Dean Tate. You might know of Dean Tate as the recipient of the Australian Game Developers Conference 2004 Award for Best Level Design (Tribes: Vengeance). Dean talks to Eurogamer on the expansion pack for SWAT 4: The Stetchkov Syndicate...
Dean Tate: When planning a level I like to look at it from two distinct points of view, the game mechanics and the story.
The first thing we did when starting the expansion was to sit down and…
XboxCore.com have a rather recent "preview" of Micro Forte's Citizen Zero up at their site. While the article itself doesn't really contain any new information on the game for those who've been following it over the years, it's still a nice summary on the game, the BigWorld engine that's running the show, and the company behind it all. If you've never heard of Citizen Zero, this is a nice place to start...
"Citizen Zero takes players on a crash course in battling for your life, striving to grow…
CALLING ALL ARTISTS
ELECTRONIC GAMES AUSTRALIA
TRADEMARK LOGO CONTEST
Mission Statement
To build wealth and value in Australia?s independent game developers, broaden their international branding power, protect their intellectual property, and encourage collaboration among developers that leads to larger and more ambitious projects.
Deadline for submissions - 17th of March 2006
AWARD $500.00
Winner is announced 31st of March 2006
Open to the public. Register and review rules online at:
www.ega.…
I think you all know of 3D Realms, dont you? Of Duke Nukem Forever fame? Well, 3D Realms have been around forever, and in the early days, they were known as Apogee Software. On the 3D Realms website, they have a series of legacy interviews where they go back and interview some of the developers they worked with over the years. The latest interview is with none other than local industry veteran, John Passfield!
"Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series continues with the seventh edition, this…
Those naughty people at the Tiscali.games website have scanned and uploaded some magazine screenshots and concept art from Bioshock, the spiritual successor of System Shock 2. No word has been made public on whether Irrational Canberra is taking part in the development of this game, but the engine that is running the show here is the Vengeance engine. It's a highly modified version of the Unreal technology that was used for Tribes: Vengeance, a game which was developed mostly in the Canberra…
Urgrund has confirmed that U-235 Studios is no more. The Melbourne startup was previously working on Retribution, a nextgen FPS'er title using the Reality Engine...
"Yep, we're finished. After 15months of solid (insane amount of late nights!) work and appearances at international games conferences (GDC in LA and GameConnect in France), we got no interest from anyone.
It's a real shame. I felt the studio had a lot of potential."
Submitted by Rob
Short editorial on BigKid asking the question whether the success of WoW is having a negative impact on the game industry as a whole.
"Some might claim that World of Warcraft is growing the market by bringing in large numbers of new gamers that may not have otherwise bought video games previously. I contend that the only thing growing is Blizzard and Vivendi?s bank balances because these new gamers are under the same spell as the rest and are only playing World of Warcraft.…
